Youth startup helps farmers meet quality assurance

Owning and managing a business in the food industry can be quite difficult. In fact, just the smallest mishap in which the quality has been compromised, can easily tarnish your business.

According to Fazil Wobulembo, quality assurance is a culture highly desired yet seldom practiced. He says that if farmers are to benefit from their effort, this culture must be embraced.

Food can be contaminated anywhere along the value chain from production to consumption. Much of the burden in Uganda is from inadequate handling of food during production, processing, storage, transportation and retailing.

In Uganda, the main law that governs food safety is the Food and Drug Act 1964, which has not been amended to account for new technology, food safety issues, and challenges. In the absence of an updated food law, Uganda relies heavily on other laws such as the UNBS Act 1983, under which it has the mandate to formulate and enforce national standard specifications for commodities and codes of practice; promote standardisation in commerce, industry, health, safety, and social welfare; and provide testing and calibration services to facilitate both regulatory and promotional roles.

A solution

The fragmented food safety system has left many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the food value chain at a loss.

Wami Quality Consults, is a consulting firm based in Gayaza dealing in quality control and assurance supporting more than 30 SMEs and smallholder agribusinesses in avocado, grains and chia seeds for their quality control and assurance needs.

“Many SMEs lack the capacity to get qualified international experts to support them. We come in with expertise that is backed by global recognition to help them achieve their goals,” says Wobulembo, the managing director of the firm.

The company has experts in various fields including food science and processing, agriculture, microbiology and industrial chemistry.

For those companies and individuals wishing to venture into the export market, Wami Quality Consults helps them to obtain the required food safety management ISO 22000 standards.

ISO 22000 is a certifiable standard that sets out the overall requirements for a food safety management system. It defines the steps an organisation must take to demonstrate its ability to control food safety hazards and ensure that food is safe for human consumption.

“We do not have a standard figure as a business because startups have big challenges with capital and we handle them on a case-by-case basis,” he says.

Go between

To support Buy Uganda Build Uganda, the UNBS offers a product certification (Q-Mark) for locally produced products.

Micro and small enterprises pay certification fees of Shs500,000 while medium and large enterprises pay Shs1m to use the quality mark for one year. This does not include laboratory testing fees.

Having such systems can bring enormous benefits to any business involved in food production as it can help to reduce the risk of contamination and harm to the end consumer. However, putting it in place is not always a simple task and can involve significant amounts of time and effort.

Wobulembo says they help the food sector to prepare for implementing the food safety management systems according to the requirements by guiding them through the various tasks, thus making the process smoother and more effective.

“We have that knowledge within and we can develop the standards that meet the international standards and certify them using the various certifiers locally and internationally. There is still a knowledge gap between the manufacturers and the certification bodies which we are trying to fill,” he says.

Food production in Uganda is mostly in the hands of smallholder farmers who are not well equipped to meet food management control systems.

As third-party certifiers, Wami Consults helps improve the output from smallholder farmers, who pool their harvest together for big buyers.

He says that working with smallholder farmers on best practices and quality control, with a hope of helping them achieve better market prices.

“There is talk of value addition and recent market challenges of aflatoxins. If smallholder farmers are not helped, they can lose a significant amount of their income and crop,” he says.

The emphasis here is put on advising farmers to use such technologies as solar dryers to add value on their produce as well as proper storage.

 Challenges

Wobulembo says that quality control in the food-value chain is a culture that must be observed right from production to the plate. He says that farmers must be aware of the market demands before growing a certain crop. Then they should be aware of how it is supposed to be handled before it reaches the market. If it is maize, for instance, producers need to know the desired moisture content and storage protocols to avoid excuses of aflatoxins. “Most of the farmers and those in the value chain do not have that culture of quality assurance in them,” he says.

Ensuring product quality in agro products focuses more on preventing defects with a focus on the process to make the final product.

There are a number of audits that are taken into consideration including; factory or store audit, inspection, pre-production inspection, during production inspection, pre-shipment, loading and unloading.

Q-Mark

Micro and small enterprises pay certification fees of Shs500,000 while medium and large enterprises pay Shs1m to UNBS to use the quality mark for one year.